Tail of Oroborous
by Siyengo
Summary: The Elric brothers never meant to stumble across the strange and sadistic magician and his sinfully created, artificial son. Could this be their opportunity to save just one innocent soul, made only to die so another could live? Canon centred, vaguely AU.
1. Of Hairy Soup and Carnivals

**A/N: **God, I haven't written fanfiction for over a year now. This feels decidedly odd and I'm nervous, but oh well.

FMA is my current thing – this is, I suppose, AU. It wasn't AU when I first started planning it(bloody canon continuation)but no other stories seem to worry about that sort of thing. XD It _will _have OCs in it, but apparently I've got some sort of ability in not turning them into Sues… I don't know, that's just what I've been told. If it turns out not to be true, please tell me otherwise. XD Anyway, this was at first set between the Exam and Lior, but a sudden attack of the Canon Monster destroyed that, and now I've frankly no idea when it takes place. Most FMA fics seem to float in a strange and timeless environment, oddly enough.

Moreso than the OCs, though, I'm worried about keeping the canons in-character. So, if I slip too severely on the characterisation of, well, anybody, please pull me up on it – I won't bite, falme or remove any articles of clothing from anybody, as long as the critics can spell.

**Disclaimer: **Fullmetal Alchemist does not belong to me. If there's a character in this who you don't recognise, they probably _do _belong to me. If you want to steal them I don't mind, but it signifies a dire lack of good taste on your part. XD

* * *

Chapter One – Of Hairy Soup and Carnivals

-

How very odd peace seemed after such a long period of general madness.

For once, nothing strange seemed to be happening. Trees slashed past the window, the rolling fields which stretched to the cornflower-blue sky were golden in the afternoon light; Edward and Alphonse Elric were the only passengers in their compartment, possibly in the entire train, and for a few hours at least nothing had gone wrong.

Of course, Ed seemed to thrive on chaos. When there was none to be had, he tended to create more.

"There's a hair in my soup," he said, his voice dangerously low. Sprawled on the seat amidst a great tangle of plates and bowls seemingly kept from cascading onto the floor by inertia alone, he was holding a mug at eye level and glaring into it with a hawklike intensity. When there was no immediate response, he repeated, "Al. There's a _hair _in my _soup._"

Alphonse regarded him, wondering what to say. In situations like these, where food was at stake, there was a fine line between giving Ed advice that would be accepted and giving Ed advice that would send him into a howling rage.

"Maybe you should take it out," Al suggested, a little timidly. "And then re-boil it, to kill the germs."

"But I _paid _for this," Ed growled. "I paid for chicken soup with little dry bits in it, I didn't pay to eat somebody else's hair!"

"Do you want me to go ask for another mug?" Al asked, wincing internally with the memory of the fuss that Ed had kicked up when the train chef hadn't understood his abstract requests for croutons. And then there had been the row over how the soup was not to be made with milk. The staff had been eager to please an apparently rare pair of real-life alchemists, but after ten minutes the novelty had begun to wear loose and they had told him that they would make his soup with soy milk for an extra cost, but would not forego creamy white liquid altogether.

"Excuse me," Ed said as a porter brushed past. She seemed inclined to keep walking – indeed, she seemed to hurry up a little – but he reached out and grabbed her sleeve, his metal fingers clinking as they closed. Squeaking, she turned back to him; Al couldn't see her face, but he could see Ed's, and his brother looked decidedly ferocious for such a little thing.

"Y- yes sir?"

"There appears to be a hair in my soup." At that, Ed plucked a fine thread from the surface of the mug and held it out to her. "I know there's a war on, but soup costs more than enough without it having hairs in it. I could have died!"

"Died? From what?" Al asked, confused.

Ed looked at him sideways, warning him with a look not to spoil the atmosphere of drama before he managed to coax this girl into giving him a refund. "I might not look it, but I have a sensitive stomach. I'm allergic to all sorts of things. If I had digested a single scalp germ…" Leaning back, he shut his eyes long-sufferingly, as if the pain of talking about it was costing him greatly. "I could have been infected, and died."

Realising what his brother was doing, Alphonse piped up eagerly, "he's been like this ever since he was little. If he eats a piece of fresh bread that someone else has breathed on, he breaks out in hives!"

"That must be terrible for you," the girl said, a little sceptically.

"Oh, it is," Ed sighed. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for a refund, that was my last penny and I can't eat this soup now."

"What about him?" the girl asked, nodding toward Al, who quailed slightly.

"I'm allergic to wheat," he blurted out, and she raised her eyebrows.

"So," she said, looking back at Ed with some bewilderment, "you can't eat… anything, and he can't eat wheat?"

"Nothing that's been tainted by other people's germs, like those carried in hair," Ed said. "I'm always searching for food, but it's so hard to find… I think I'm going to starve before long…"

"Oh, so you're malnutritioned?" the porter asked. Ed opened one golden eye and glanced at her forebodingly, and before Al could warn her, she continued, "is that why you're so short?"

Silence descended upon the entire train like a vale of rain, broken only by the whirring of the gears; it lasted for all of a second, before Ed flipped from a seated position into a vertical position in a remarkable feat of flexibility. He began to wave his hands in the astonished porter's face as Al turned away, trying not to snicker.

"_Who are you calling a speck so miniscule he could drown in a rain-drop?"_

"I- I didn't say that," she protested, backing away. With a crash, the towers of plates descended upon the floor, sending china and soup spraying in all directions. Al took a piece of chalk from his apron pocket – he always made sure to carry one around with him, he never knew when he'd be separated from Ed and need to use alchemy himself – and unhurriedly scratched a transmutation circle onto the floor while Ed abused the unfortunate porter at length.

"_That's why you gave me the hairy soup, isn't it? You're prejudiced! You're prejudiced against people who aren't as freakishly tall as you are! Well, you know what? My brain doesn't have to control as much body as yours does, which is probably why I'm smart and you're stupid!"_

Clapping a hand down on either side of the circle, Al concentrated for a few moments – it wasn't easy, what with all the distractions – and the shouting stopped abruptly as both Ed and the porter, who was now in tears, looked over to see the source of the white light which now shone around the cabin, splashing on the sunset-dappled walls.

Outside, the fields were broken only by the occasional scribble of fence, line of trees or a rare farmhouse, but in the distance could be seen rising smoke, which had to be the sign of some sort of civilisation. Alphonse lifted his hands and got to his feet with a clanking of steel. On the floor where there had previously been shattered ceramic and scraps of half-eaten food, there were now five plates, two bowls, two mugs and a pie that Al had added for a stylish touch. He'd had to use the food for _something, _at least.

The porter fled sobbing, and Ed sat back down, acting as if nothing had happened.

"Very nice," he said, and grabbing the pie from the floor took a bite out of it. Muffled by a mouthful of meat and vegetables and hopefully hairless gravy made from the remains of the soup, he added, "it's a good pie, you should go professional."

"Brother," Al protested, "you don't know what's been on that floor."

"My feet," Ed said abstractly, and chewed happily.

A few minutes later, the manager came round in a storm of glory. Vertically challenged in such a way as to rival Ed and without the latter's sinew, he was a spherical and theoretically unimpressive little man; his face was so red and his voice so loud, however, that Alphonse cringed as he found himself being bailed up against the wall by an accusing finger.

"We need the money," the manager barked, "but we don't need it that much. You come in, you yell, you're rude to the staff, poor Jennie is drafting her resignation letter right now! You eat _all _our food!"

"Actually," Ed said, "that was me."

"No it wasn't," the manager corrected him. "Jennie said it was the older brother."

Alphonse hurriedly restrained Ed, clapping a hand over his mouth before he could yell something incriminating. "I'm sorry, sir," Al said.

"Sorry isn't good enough. Next stop, you're getting off this train!"

"But we can't," Ed protested, wriggling free of his brother's grasp, "we're state alchemists, we're on a mission."

Al decided that it wouldn't be prudent to remind Ed at that particular moment that they were only so urgently pressed for time because the Fullmetal Alchemist had been procrastinating admirably for three weeks.

"Then you can damn well find another train!" The manager turned his back on them. "All our employees are going to the war, even the women. It's a desperate situation. We can't afford to lose any more because of little pre-teen buffoons like you."

Quickly, Alphonse silenced Ed again. The manager disappeared down the corridor, slamming the door behind him. Releasing Ed, who sputtered for breath but didn't show any inclination to chase the manager and set him straight on a number of things, Al sighed and looked out the window. It was getting dark.

"You're so good at getting us in trouble, brother," he said accusingly, "you should channel that effort into your alchemy, you could end the war if you tried."

"No I couldn't, Al," Ed replied, and grinned, seeming to be quite pleased with himself. "And hey, we're alchemists, we'll find another train and pay for it with alchemy. I've got it all worked out. Trust me, Al – I know everything!"

Twenty minutes later, they were cast from the train doors by a pair of burly guards who had sprung seemingly from nowhere. Realising that his suitcase had remained on the train, Ed pursued it along the track, yelling and waving like a maniac while Al stood, a resigned statue, near the entrance of the station. Eventually the case was cast from an open window, and another few minutes passed while the two Elric brothers hunted for the coins that had scattered across the concrete.

"Well," Ed said, seating himself on an uncomfortable wooden bench, "now we wait. Another train'll come along in no time at all."

Silently, Al pointed at a sign on the gate. Leaning forward and squinting to see it in the mostly-dark, Ed let his face fall forward into his hands and swore softly.

It read **Station Closed Indefinitely – No Trains Until Further Notice.

* * *

**

"How do we get ourselves into these situations?" Ed wondered out loud as they walked down a deserted street.

"I think it's because you upset people," Al offered, kicking a stone; it whizzed away into the distance and broke a window, and he looked at his own foot in disbelief, before dashing over to repair the damage. Ed waited for him, and once he was done, they kept walking.

Broken streetlights cast a pallid light on the seemingly empty lines of houses, giving the entire place an eerie feel. They had been walking for nigh on ten minutes, searching for a hotel or even a sign of human life, but the place appeared to be a ghost town; not even the cry of an owl disturbed the silence, just the scuffing of the brothers' feet on the dusty road. Old cars were lined in the gutter, with their owners nowhere in sight.

As they paused at a crossroad, Ed looked around and commented, "someone usually attacks us about now."

"Or something," Al added.

Silence.

"Hello?" Ed called into the darkness, gazing down the road to where it disappeared amongst trees. "Is anybody there?" He was quiet for a moment, then yelled "_hello!_" so loudly that if Al had possessed ears, they would have rung.

Another moment's silence. Nervously, Ed and Al glanced at each other; they were just about to start walking again when a withered hand fell on Ed's shoulder. Yelping with shock, he whirled around, his blond braid slapping against Al's armour as he did so; he was just about to clap his hands together and make something explode when he realised that the creature that had snuck up behind them was not a homunculus bent on homicide, but an old woman.

"G-good evening," he stuttered, trying to force his pulse rate to slow down. It wasn't his fault that he was jumpy – this town wasn't exactly welcoming.

"What are you two doing wandering around on your own?" she asked, her voice crackling like fallen autumn leaves. Her face was so heavily lined that Ed could barely see her eyes, but they were just visible, a clear sky-blue that was the only thing fair about her. She resembled nothing more than an apple, fine and rosy, which had been left out in the sun until it withered and wrinkled into a husk. Somehow, she made Al shiver; he wondered how old she was.

"We're looking for an inn," Al explained, trying not to let the quaver into his voice. At least he didn't have to worry about embarrassing voice breaks – Ed suffered from them occasionally, and they were always accompanied by a bright red face and a sudden silence on the Fullmetal Alchemist's part. "We're stranded here tonight. Our train… uh… it broke down," he lied.

"Well," she croaked, "there'd be hotels nearer the centre of town. I don't know about staff, though. They might all be at the carnival."

Adjusting his cloak, Ed smiled at her, trying to look like the very picture of a grateful teenager. As much as he disliked it when people older than he made automatic assumptions about youth, it was always best not to fan the flames too much; of course, he had forgotten his performance of an hour before, which had quite probably done a great deal of harm to the national teenage population's reputation, at least with the staff of the train. On the other hand, maybe it had only blighted Ed's reputation, which was already so stained as to be almost opaque. Hopefully Colonel Mustang wouldn't hear about it.

Al, however, had other, more important things on his mind.

"Carnival?" he asked, tilting his head questioningly with a screech of rusty metal. "Ouch… Ed, remind me to polish that later. Did you just say 'carnival,' ma'am?"

"_No, _Alphonse," Ed warned him.

"Oh… but, brother…"

"It's the biggest thing that ever happens in this here village," the old woman told them. "All the kids from the district and beyond go down to watch the magic shows."

"Magic?" Ed repeated, frowning.

"Magic! Those men are wonderful, wonderful magicians. They travel around, some of them, but a lot of them come from the village. They do magic during the rest of the year, of course, but they do it for show on the carnival nights, and such incredible things they do with it too! They can make fire, and they can freeze water quicker than you'd blink your eye!"

"Sounds like alchemy, doesn't it, Al," Ed commented.

"No, it's not alchemy," the woman said eagerly, "alchemy's no use to anybody, it's too scientific, too confusing for commoners like us."

"Well, that's not surprising," Ed growled, "considering it's a science and all. And it's not _that _hard to figure out…"

"Brother," Al pleaded, "can't we go, just for an hour or so? I haven't been to a carnival since… since Mum…"

"Al, we have stuff we need to do," Ed said, while the woman smiled and walked away. They both watched her go, hobbling up the street, with some surprise at this sudden departure; then Ed sighed and looked at the toes of his boots, frustrated. "We can't waste any more time."

"It won't take that long, we'd only go for an hour! And it would be fun, and it would… make me feel closer to Mum, somehow… like she was almost still alive."

"She's not. Carnivals are just wastes of money, anyway," Ed said, although he could feel himself wavering at the plea in his brother's voice.

"But don't you remember that night?"

He did indeed. Long brown hair and laughing grey eyes, shell-pale fingers trying to stop wisps of the hair from catching in a melting ice cream; watching a fire-eater and crying into her skirt in a moment of certainty that the man had set himself alight; screaming at a sudden break of horses, the distress almost immediately replaced by wonder as they bent their heads to see, their huge black eyes like pools of night; Alphonse eating one too many corn dogs and throwing up, back when he had been able to eat; things that glittered, things that sparkled, things that tasted sweet, and his mother's laughter overall. And at the end of the night, being carried home half-asleep, he over one of her shoulders, his brother over the other.

"Sure I remember," Ed replied, and shaking his head, smiled a little sadly. "Mum's not here, Al. It won't be the same. And seeing all those people there, laughing and eating and having fun… you know it'll just depress you…"

"No it won't," Al insisted. "Really, Ed, I just want to see all those people. It's just for fun, I want to watch the magic shows and see other people having a good time, not fighting and killing each other. It's been so long since we've done anything like this."

"You know the magic will just be alchemy, right?" Ed asked, and Al nodded. "Are you sure you want to? I mean, I don't mind really, as long as we check into a hotel first and we don't go to bed too late… we _do _have somebody to piss off, remember, and we can't do that on less than eight hours… or an empty stomach," he added, half to himself. Had Al been able to smile, he would have beamed at these words. Carnivals were a childish sort of pastime, maybe, but still.

"I'm sorry, brother," Al said, "I don't mean to be demanding… it's just, I haven't seen anybody really happy for years. I don't care about not being able to do stuff, I just want to hear people laughing and know it's not because they want something, or because they're planning something, or stuff like that."

"As long as you don't call alchemy magic," El conceded, shrugging. "If it makes you happy, we can do it – I mean, I probably don't let you do enough things these days. Come on," he said, hoisting his suitcase onto one shoulder and setting off in the direction to which the old woman had pointed before seemingly vanishing, "let's find a hotel first."

"Thankyou, Edward!" Alphonse said, laughing a little at his own eagerness as he followed his brother down the still-deserted street. The shadows closed over them, and the only creature left on the road was a scrawny cat, grey tabby and so thin that its eyes bulged like saucers.

* * *

**A/N: **Please review, I fear I've lost my touch and need reassurance to either the positive or the negative. Besides, I tend to return reviews.

Bye!


	2. Sleeping Dogs

**A/N: **Thankyou, Pianogirl123 and, er, She Of the Pants, for your reviews. They were very much appreciated. And yes, I wanted a bit of lightness – I mean, it's FMA.

If I get sporked for this, I'll blame one or both of you.

Anyway, like I said, all I really want is notes on characterisation – and also, whether my OC is a Sue or not. (if so, I'll end up on That Community anyway, but… well, it's nice to be told in advance. XD)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own FMA, but I do own my OC (who is, incidentally, male.)

* * *

Sleeping Dogs

"Good evening, Colonel," Ed said into the phone as Al unpacked the suitcase onto the bed behind him. Glancing up, Al could see that his brother was smirking; he turned away again and pulled a suspiciously mouldy-looking pair of socks from the case, regarded them for a moment, and tossed them onto the floor.

"Fullmetal," Roy replied. Although his voice was garbled by the phone lines, Ed could hear that he was straining to maintain some sort of civility. "It's been a while."

"I've missed you," Ed grinned. "It's not healthy, not having someone to hate – that's repression, it can cause all sorts of problems."

"You should have called earlier," Roy said, "god knows what damage being repressed has done to you. It might have stunted your growth." The smile vanished off Ed's face, and there was a terse moment of silence, before Roy growled, "Fullmetal, where the hell _are _you?"

"No idea," Ed said breezily, "we got kicked off our train and now we're in some ghost town in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but all the trains have been cancelled, so we won't be getting back to Central any time soon." Hearing Roy bite back a sharp comment of some sort on the other end of the line, Ed grinned. "Isn't it a shame? It's a nice town, though. It doesn't have a name and the entire population's married its first cousin, but it's a nice town. We can check it for suspicious activity if you want."

"I'd much prefer," Roy said, clearly trying not to snap and scream down the phone at him, "if you tried to get back here as quickly as possible. If you tell us where you are, we can send someone to pick you up – but we're tired of wasting resources on you, Elric."

Sitting on the bed with his weight making a great pit in the mattress, Al nonchalantly twisted the head of his armour off. He checked it over briefly, and saw that there were seams of rust around the screws; he kneeled on the floor, scratched another circle, and placed the helmet in the middle of it, unbothered by the absurdity of such a thing.

"I _am _a resource."

A high-pitched sound like the whine of a microphone, and the escaping energy of the transmutation turned to bright light which hit the shadows and instantly faded. Al picked up his head, which was now gleaming like new, and twisted it back onto his shoulders. With a creak of steel on steel, he flexed to ensure it was secure and sat back down, eyeing the mouldy socks on the floor with some suspicion.

"What was that?" Roy asked. "Who's transmuting?"

"My brother's just polishing his head," Ed said, "to make sure his brain hasn't gone rusty."

"I don't have a brain, brother," Al reminded him.

"Anyway," Ed told Roy, brow furrowed as he tried to remember the journey, during which he had been too busy eating to really notice what was happening outside the window, "we're about halfway along the eastern railway, the one that cuts through Aquroya. Landscape features include… uh… trees, and grass. And scary old women."

"I see."

Ed heard a female voice say something in the background, and Roy curtly relayed what Ed had just told him. A moment later, he added, "this town… is it called Kanets?"

"I don't _know _what it's called," Ed said.

"Kanets is halfway along the railroad," he heard Riza Hawkeye say, the words muffled by distance. "I've never been there, but it's apparently just an old industrial village – it had a population of ninety four last census, and it would have decreased rather than increased since then. But it's still on all the maps, we'd only take about six hours to get there, if we sent a driver during the day."

"Thankyou, Lieutenant," Roy said. "Fullmetal, we'll be sending a driver to pick you up tomorrow morning, they should be there at 9 a.m. sharp. Stay in the hotel and make sure you're packed, you'll be driven straight to the next station… don't go anywhere, for god's sake, or there'll be midget pie on the menu when you get back."

"Yes sir," Ed said meekly. "I will remain perfectly stationary so as not to provoke the great Roy Mustang… overbearing lecherous piece of pig's arse that he is," he whispered, just loud enough that Roy could hear it.

"Speaking of which," Roy said coolly, "the library floor has been infested by some sort of rotten-smelling mould and must be cleaned out. We could get an alchemist in to do it, but I'd much rather that someone with plenty of free time on their hands – like you, Fullmetal – worked on it. And of course, you can't dodge your duty when you're right under my nose, so it'll be an interesting few days for you when you come back…"

Before Ed could say anything more, the Colonel hung up with a disdainful _click. _

"Bastard," he muttered, and Al looked up questioningly. "Well, it looks like we'll be stuck scrubbing floors when we get back to Central, so we might as well enjoy it while we can. How much money do we have?"

"Enough," Al replied, splashing gold coins onto the floor. Kneeling, Ed began to scoop them up, depositing them in his pockets – they jingled as they came into contact with the automail, the sound muffled by the layers of cloth – and after counting twenty, more than enough for food, dumped the rest back in his suitcase. As he snapped it shut and locked it, he explained the situation to Al, who managed to look displeased with the mould situation without actually showing any expression.

"We can just use alchemy, can't we?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Ed said, getting to his feet again. His automail never seemed to go rusty, possibly because it wasn't antique like his brother's; of course, the automail mechanics had stopped using iron as automail for that very reason, it rusted too easily. "I mean, we'd have to transmute the entire library, and I don't think Muskrat would like it if we transmuted century-old books into, I don't know, woodchips or something."

"At least I can't smell it," Al said, rather cheerfully although there was a hint of melancholy in his voice. "How about I clean it out while you go study?"

"I wouldn't make you do that." Ed's tone was a little reproachful. "Hey, we've got hours before the dogs on wheels turn up to collect us, we'll think about it when we get back to Central." He cupped his hands around the candle in the corner – it was an austere sort of room, with two beds, a table with a candle on it, and little else – and blew it out, plunging the room into absolute darkness, but for the violet points of light that were Alphonse's eyes. They hadn't really been prepared to spend too much money on a hotel room, considering that they had been on the tracks for three weeks and their funding was running out; even as he blew the flame out, Ed wondered how he would be able to coerce an appropriate military figure into giving them more. Maybe Maes Hughes would be sympathetic, although most of his energy lately had been devoted to retelling the tale of how he had found Elysia attempting to draw something that he was certain had been a transmutation circle…

…over, and over, and over.

"Wait for me," Al called, jumping up and running after his brother. "Ed, wait! I can't walk as fast as you, I've got artificial arthritis! I'm _creaking, _brother!"

Laughing, they both took off down the street, casting a golden dust-cloud behind them and ignoring the askance looks they received from the hotel staff. For once, they weren't dogs of the military or tireless hunters of the Philosopher's Stone; they were just a pair of kids looking to have some fun.

* * *

There was just the faintest hint of pallor in the sky, although the sun had set no more than half an hour before; the year was drawing toward winter, and the days were getting shorter. Surrounded by the cheering throng, Ed shivered and tugged his crimson cloak tighter around his narrow shoulders as a particularly icy breeze whistled through him. Beside him, Al's metal skin was cold, but of course the latter couldn't feel it.

The cheering was obliterated by a tidal wave of whispers and then silence as a pair of caped figures stepped up onto the stage. Al looked down and noticed that Ed, too proud to ask for help, was jumping up and down to see the stage; ignoring his brother's protests, Al swept Ed up and held him playfully in midair as he wriggled and hissed to be let down. Eventually, Ed stopped moving and hung there resignedly, and Al set him down on the ground again.

"Maybe it would be easier," Al whispered, "if we moved a bit closer to the stage? You're the genius, you should be thinking of these things."

"My store of vast knowledge is theoretical, not practical," Ed retorted as they pushed through the crowd, trying not to dislodge too many small, excited children en route. Heads turned as Alphonse made his way through and he was the butt of many bewildered expressions; although he greeted several of these cheerfully, Ed heard him sigh as they finally reached the front. Before them, the two cloaked "magicians" – alchemists, Ed thought disdainfully – were standing silently, a few feet apart on the stage. Leaning forward to see them better, he could just see the chalk lines of a transmutation circle that seemed to cover most of the platform, as well as behind the curtain and backstage. How very sneaky of them.

A small, grey cat, painfully thin and with eyes vast and pale, wound through the feet of the crowd. Alphonse noticed it, ducking and weaving as the heavy boots and sandals came within hair-widths of its frail, wide-eared head; he bent with a rasp of metal and scooped it into his arms without a moment's hesitation. It took this considerably better than Ed had, immediately curling up and seeming to watch the stage as well as his leather-clad fingers stroked its silky fur.

Ed noticed this and tried not to roll his eyes. "You and your cats."

"Me and my cats," Al agreed.

The taller of the two figures on the stage turned to the shorter and spoke sharply to them. Al strained to hear – Ed was distracted temporarily by a mobile seller offering fresh-baked buns and some strange sort of sausage made from corn at an absurdly low price – but all he could hear was the snippet "for god's sake, look like you're doing something this time or people won't believe it. And don't _look _at me."

"Okay," the smaller figure replied.

Nodding curtly, their companion – who, to judge by the voice, was a man – moved off until they had vanished behind the turquoise-coloured velvet curtain. Al watched this exchange curiously; nobody else seemed to notice it, and the next moment Ed tripped over the foot of the woman behind and smeared tomato sauce all over Al's breastplate. Transferring the cat to the other hand – it didn't seem to mind – Al removed his apron and wiped the sauce off, accepting Ed's composite apology and shifting of blame to the woman's shoe.

With a hum of electricity, the lights faded, leaving no light at all but for the spotlight that pooled silvery around the small creature on the stage. Lifting their face to the audience, they flipped their hood back, revealing themselves to be a child with wide eyes and a thin, almost gaunt face. From his vantage point near Al's shoulder – he was standing on a chair, making him only an inch or two taller than most of the rest of the audience – Ed whispered "is that a boy or a girl?"

"I… don't know… but it's pretty young," Al commented, stroking the happy cat. Behind the alchemist he could see a large cube of something translucent and vaguely bluish, which he immediately identified as being a block of ice.

"Bet it's a sham," Ed muttered, and his brother elbowed him.

"Don't be so cynical, Ed!"

"Hello everybody," said the child of still indeterminate gender, and they smiled as a ripple of greeting came back to them. Without another word, they knelt on the stage and bowed their head, slapping both hands on the ground; the crowd began to huddle closer, necks craning to see, and Ed snorted at their eagerness.

There was a sound like a kettle boiling, a shrill, glinting hiss, and a flash of white light that threw the profiles of the people standing around into harsh relief, the shadows on their faces showing blacker than midnight. People began to mutter excitedly, and suddenly there was a crack and the roar of fire; the young alchemist stood up, dusting their hands off on their trousers, while behind them a ring of flames began to dance in ribbons of gold and scarlet.

Another pause, and the rapid-fire sound of applause. Grinning, the child snapped their fingers, and the flames went out with a ferocious hissing. Water spread rapidly from a point behind them and dripped of the edges of the stage; young audience members stretched their hands out to catch the droplets, in the hope, presumably, that partaking of such magical water would grant them miraculous powers.

"I have the power of creation," the child proclaimed, the words obviously learnt by rote, "and the power to make whole that which was broken! If you have anything that needs fixing, bring it up and see my magic at work!"

Ed rolled his eyes as a handful of people surged forward, each holding a bag which seemed to contain their broken possessions. Apparently, the kid's act was well-known in these parts; how could nobody in this village have heard of alchemy, though? It was madness.

At a gesture from the alchemist, they lined up at the side of the stage – nine of them, Ed counted, all with expressions of rather absurd hope on their faces. Bending, the child took something from the leader of the line – a middle-aged woman in a flowered dress, the bottom of which was yellowish with dust – and held it out for the audience to see: a crystal bowl, broken into three uneven pieces, the meagre light sparking like the drops of water on its sharp edges. Turning and kneeling, the child _threw _the pieces into the centre of the stage, and there was a crack as they shattered further; as the woman cried out in protest, more light splashed around the chamber and this false magician presented a beautifully carved and complete crystal bowl, glittering like the ice that had been melted a few minutes earlier, back to her with great flair.

The crowd broke into applause, and they continued to cheer and clap as the child, a huge grin upon their thin face, transmuted back to their former glory three goblets, a marble statuette, what appeared to be a broken violin, a flute-like instrument so bent out of shape that it looked as if someone had twisted it in its entirety, several articles of broken golden jewellery, a cracked hand-mirror and, quite impressively, a pocket watch. This last article was buckled and limp when they were given it, the glass face crushed – when they returned it a moment later, it was whole, gleaming, and ticking healthily.

One by one, the smiling patrons returned to their seats, cradling their restored possessions like rescued children. Snorting, Ed muttered impotently about the stupidity of some folk.

"Brother, it's _helping _them," Al reminded him.

"But they're falling for it," Ed protested, and stopped as he realised that a deathly silence had fallen on the entire carnival ground. Looking back toward the stage, he saw that the final "customer" had stepped up to the child. A haggard young man, his fairish hair hung lank around his face; when he glanced at the audience, the Elric brothers saw that his skin was so pale as to be almost blue, and there were circles the colours of bruises beneath his desperate eyes. As he presented his bundle, Ed and Al gasped in unison, despite themselves.

It was a dead dog.

Grey-furred and enormous, it hung limply in the man's arms, and Al wondered briefly how he could have lugged it all the way up there; although there was a great hole in its side through which its white ribs could be just seen, it was thickly muscled and looked like it weighed more than its gaunt owner. He caught a glimpse of disgust and what looked like anxiety on the child's face as he took the dead animal, staggering under its weight.

"It can't do that," Ed growled, "that's life alchemy." How hadn't they noticed the dead thing before? It was _huge._

"But it's not human transmutation," Al whispered.

"It doesn't _matter, _it's still creating life. And it won't be able to do it anyway, you just watch."

The patron mumbled something to the child, who turned toward the audience.

"This… this is, er, his daughter's dog," they stuttered. "She's… she's dying… and the dog's the only thing keeping her… the only thing keeping her alive."

"Please bring him back," the man pleaded, his voice loud enough that Ed and Al could hear it, "I can't lose her too. Please, I just want a second chance… there was a wolf, I couldn't stop it, it was starving… it was _eating _him… Sally loves that dog, she'll die if she loses him."

"I'll… I'll try, sir," the child said, and kneeling on the floor, sent the dog spilling in a great tangle of hair, blood and stiffened limbs onto the wooden floorboards, in the centre of where the Elric brothers presumed the transmutation circle would be. Now the audience was completely quiet, but for a small handful of sobbing children who had been obviously affected by the sight. The man stood slumped, his eyes burning with faint hope, as the child clapped their hands onto the floor again, bowing their head and this time closing their eyes.

Whiter than a dead baby's bones the light beamed out this time, and Ed had to cover his eyes; Al, unaffected by it, watched transfixed as the child glanced behind the curtain to where the other caped figure was also crouching with their hands on the ground. Suddenly, Al put all the pieces of the puzzle together and realised that the child was just the avatar; it was their older companion who was doing the alchemy. He was about to tell Ed this when the light grew until it was almost painful for him, as physically impossible as it was; the sound of rushing wind started and abruptly stopped again, and the light died. All around, people uncovered their eyes, muttering to each other fearfully.

All the whispering stopped, however, as something began to whimper.

Raising its head, the dog writhed slightly on the floor and gazed toward the still-kneeling alchemist with a mute appeal in its eyes. It moved, sliding on the floor; then its claws began to scrabble on the hard wood, and it got to its feet, swaying there unsteadily. Silently, its owner bent down and held his hands out before the awestruck audience; still uncertain on its feet, the dog limped toward him and finally rested its muzzle in his hands.

"Oh my god," Al whispered. There was nothing else that could be said.

"But that's impossible," Ed cried, standing up. Heads turned and people stared; the child turned also, looking back at him from wide, fearful eyes. "You don't make life with alchemy! Where's the exchange? _What did you exchange?_"

All around, people hissed at him to shut up.

"It's a life for a life," Ed shouted at the stage, and the child stood up and began to back away. Suddenly, they turned and ran offstage, ducking behind the curtain.

"You're crazy," a voice called from behind them, and Al winced, setting the frightened cat down on the ground; it raced away like a streak of scrawny lightning. "Get lost, I paid good money for this show!"

"You paid to watch alchemy?" Ed demanded, turning on the protester. "Not only alchemy, but alchemy that disregards all the basic laws?"

It was amazing, Al thought in hindsight, how quickly guards can appear when trouble is raised. A mere moment after that, his brother was snatched up by a pair of distressingly brawny men who looked to have come from nowhere; although Ed could have obliterated them alchemically in an instant, he was understandably leery about practising such things in public, and instead contented himself with shouting at the guards what must have sounded to them like gibberish, about human transmutation and life alchemy and equivalent exchange and destroying the _world, _damn it!

Al trudged after them silently as they dragged his brother off through the angry people. As they flung Ed through the gates, he took the chance and meekly apologised to one of them; a moment later he found himself also flying through the air, slamming into the dust with a crash and missing Ed by inches.

"Nobody likes us," he noticed.

"D-damn that kid," Ed growled, standing up again. He would have surely darted back into the crowd and possibly gotten himself killed, but Al nonchalantly reached out and, grabbing his collar, restrained him from going on a crusade for the upholding of alchemical law.

"If you want to beat the fear of alchemy into it," Al advised his brother, wondering if he should sit on him to stop him from attacking the child, "you need to be subtle about it." He stood up, dragging Ed with him as he crossed the road. "There's a back entrance. Why don't you go confront it backstage?"

Calming down, Ed shook himself and looked down the deserted road that lead to the brightly-lit auditorium speculatively. Glancing at Al, he grinned, although he was obviously shaken by the whole experience. Al looked back at him; he had that look in his golden eyes that said clearly that he was going over the entire plan of attack in his head, as Ed was wont to do.

"I'll take the kid," Ed said finally, "and you take the guards."

* * *

**A/N: **(begs for reviews) Even flames are welcome! 


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